


For Good

by imogenbynight



Series: Coda Fic [7]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: 15.18 Despair, Canonical Character Death, Coda, Dean Winchester Has Panic Attacks, Grief, Love, M/M, Personal Growth, Sam and Dean have some small moments in this but it's mostly about Dean and Cas and Jack, breaking the cycle of bad fathers, tw: brief non-graphic mention of character throwing up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:35:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27522406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imogenbynight/pseuds/imogenbynight
Summary: Eyes wide open and stinging, Dean stares at the negative space in the center of the room and sees the afterimage of it. The Empty, otherworldly and furious, surrounding Cas and swallowing him like a black hole devouring a star.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Jack Kline & Dean Winchester
Series: Coda Fic [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/246598
Comments: 130
Kudos: 806
Collections: Destiel is Canon - 15x18 Codas, SPN Finale "Destiel is CANON" Collection, The Destiel Fan Survey Favs Collection





	For Good

The air in the dungeon is tar-thick and heavy, and every breath is harder than the last. It leaves a taste like ozone on the back of Dean’s tongue. Crawls down into his lungs like some creeping miasmic specter intent on choking him from within.

Everything is _buzzing._ His phone, inching across the concrete floor; his back, radiating pain where it collided with the wall; his trembling hands, his chest, his every last cell screaming out like a swarm of enraged hornets.

He’s lost in his head. Lost in the replay. Lost in the helpless repetition of those last moments, where if he’d just done something, said something, anything at all, maybe Cas would still be here with him.

Eyes wide open and stinging, Dean stares at the negative space in the center of the room and sees the afterimage of it. The Empty, otherworldly and furious, surrounding Cas and swallowing him like a black hole devouring a star.

Cas’ face when it took him. His smile, beatific and beautiful in the joy he found in just—

In telling Dean.

In _telling_ him, without an ounce of hope for anything in return.

Squeezing his eyes shut, Dean presses the heels of his palms against them until he sees stars. It doesn’t help. He can’t stop seeing it. Seeing _him_.

At his feet, his phone vibrates across the floor. Stops. Starts. Again and again. He registers Sam’s name on the screen, then Jack’s, then Sam’s again. But his limbs are too heavy, and his throat has closed up. He can’t answer.

( _That’s the problem_ , he thinks, a sick feeling slithering in his gut, pressure rising in his chest. _I couldn’t answer._ )

The phone keeps buzzing, and buzzing, and buzzing, and he doesn’t pick it up, but it doesn’t matter. Whatever Sam has to tell him, Dean can’t help him. Either he’s calling because his attempts at protecting their friends has failed, or he’s calling because he’s saved everyone. 

Dean can’t deal with either possibility right now. 

Cas is gone, and Dean’s entire frame of existence is focused on that one awful, inescapable fact.

Cas is gone. Cas is gone. Dean’s jaw aches with tension, and his cheeks are tacky with dried tears, and his chest burns, and as he tries and tries to think of anything else at all the shadows in the corners of the room seem to grow darker. Deeper. The buzzing gets louder, _louder_ , his whole body trembling with the force of it, of trying not to scream. Spots appear in his vision. His hands are numb and tingling. Cas is gone, he’s gone, he’s—

_Breathe in_ , a little voice says in the back of Dean’s mind, and he heaves a breath, barely registering the wet sound of it because as soon as he’s got air in his lungs he starts crying again.

_“Dean?”_

Sam’s voice is distant, muffled, and for a moment Dean thinks he’s somehow answered a call without meaning to. But his phone is dark when he manages to focus on it, and when he taps the screen it only tells him he has dozens of missed calls spanning over the past several hours. Hours. _Hours_. Cas has been gone for—

“Cas? Dean? Are you down here?” Jack’s voice, now, closer than Sam’s, and Dean blinks at the realization that they’re home—how can they be home?—and Cas is _gone_ , and he has to tell them. He has to tell Jack.

“ _Cas_ ,” he chokes out, the word barely audible as bile rises in his throat, and the acid burn of it sets him coughing, sprawling forwards on his hands and knees and heaving until he’s empty and gasping.

“In here!” Jack’s voice is closer now, bouncing off the walls and reverberating in Dean’s skull, making his head spin. It’s too loud. Too close. Too much. “Dean, what are you—are you okay?”

Jack’s hand settles on his back, between his shoulder blades. He’s hesitant about it, like he’s not sure what he’s supposed to do when someone is sick but knows he wants to help, and Dean can’t help but think of Cas. Of his compassion. His tenderness. His cluelessness in the early days, before he knew how to relate to humanity. Before Dean really knew him at all.

_Did he love me then?_ Dean wonders despite himself, and Sam’s heavy footfalls carry him into the room just in time for Dean to let out another helpless sob. _I didn’t deserve him._

“Dean?”

“I think he’s hurt,” Jack says, his hand still resting lightly on Dean’s back. “I don’t know what happened.”

“Here, I’ll help him. Go see if you can find Cas, okay?”

Sam’s words hit Dean like a hail of buckshot. _Find Cas_. He flinches, and Jack rips his hand away, staggers back like he thinks he’s the cause of it.

“Whoa, what—” Sam reaches out, uncertain, and Dean swallows against the sick feeling that’s rising again. Shakes his head.

“Cas,” he forces out.

Wiping his mouth with a shaky hand, Dean pushes back and slumps against the wall. In the half-second he lets himself meet Sam’s gaze, he sees the way Sam’s eyes widen. The look of dawning horror.

“Where is he?” Jack asks, and Dean hates it. Hates how he can hear the waver in Jack’s voice. Hates that he can’t do anything to make it better. Can only make it worse. Fuck, he makes everything worse. “Dean, where’s Cas?”

“Gone,” he says. One syllable is all he can get out, and he can’t even bring himself to lift his head when he says it. He can’t look at Jack. He already knows that seeing his wide-blue eyes and creased brow is going to hurt more than he can handle right now. 

He looks so much like Cas that it’d seemed like a sick joke the first time Dean had seen him. Maybe it was.

“What do you mean—?” Sam starts, and Jack cuts him off, breathless with fear.

“Is he alive?”

Dean tries to answer—he _tries_. But the words tangle on his tongue, lodge in his throat like they physically can’t get past the solid lump that’s grown there, so he shakes his head. It’s a stiff jerk of a motion that makes something twinge in his neck, like his body itself is protesting the admission that he failed to keep Cas safe. Jack says something, lets out an anguished noise that makes Dean wish he’d been taken too. In his chest, his heart seizes as though Billie is crushing it all over again, and at once he’s spiralling again, pulse hitching and racing in a fractured rhythm. His hands prickle; his eyes unfocus. Darkness creeps at the edges of his vision, narrowing everything down to a single point until he feels like he’s falling down an endless well, staring up at the light as it gets further and further out of reach. 

Still, he can see it. The Empty. Cas’ face. His smile.

Sam’s saying something, but his voice seems miles away, barely audible thanks to the ringing in Dean’s ears. He couldn’t pick out a single word if his life depended on it. It’s like his cell phone all over again. Buzzing. But then Sam’s hand grips his chin and forces him to meet his gaze. 

“—at me, Dean. Hey, look at me. Breathe, Dean. _Breathe_.”

Dean does, but the air still reeks of that same bitter ozone that’s been lingering since the Empty ripped a hole into their home, only now it’s mingling with the sour stench of vomit, and it only makes it worse. His stomach lurches.

He has to get up. Get out. Away.

Using the wall as leverage, he pushes himself up onto unsteady feet. Sam’s hands hover in front of him, ready for his inevitable crash back to the floor. It’s not an unreasonable fear. Dean’s head pounds and pounds and pounds.

“Gotta— outside. Air. I can’t—”

“Yeah, okay Dean. C’mon.”

Jack is staring at them from across the room, hands tense on the back of the chair in the middle of the Devil’s trap, and Dean can’t meet his eyes. Can’t let himself see him crying. He just heads for the door, walking as fast as his body will let him, desperate to get out, to catch his breath, to _think_.

Dean makes it up the hall, up the stairs, and halfway through the library before he stumbles over his feet, and Sam catches him around the shoulders, steadies him, says, “ _I’ve got you._ ” 

And then it’s all over. Just like that, Dean is back on the floor, on his hands and knees, helpless.

_I’ve got you_ , Cas had said. _I’ll go with you. I love you. I love you. I love you._

“No—”

Everywhere his frantic gaze falls is another awful memory. 

The doorway where Cas had stood and told him _I think it's time for me to move on._ The chair where Cas had been sitting when Dean told him he couldn’t stay. The corner of the floor where Dean had almost killed him under the influence of the Mark of Cain; where he’d left an angel blade impaled in a book just inches from Cas’ face.

“ _Breathe_ , Dean. C’mon.” 

Crouching in front of him, Sam is wild-eyed but trying to hold himself together, and it sets off the part of Dean that is hard-wired to make sure his brother is safe. Forces him to center himself. Focus.

“Dean, I need you to breathe, okay?”

_Sam lost Eileen today_ , Dean remembers. _He lost Eileen, and he’s still here. He’s still trying. I can do this. Cas would want me to get up. For Sam and for Jack. For Jody and the girls. For Donna, and Charlie, and Bobby, and—_

He breathes in. Out. Follows the exaggerated rhythm that Sam sets for him until it comes naturally and he can push himself back, sitting on the floor with his back to the bookshelf.

“You with me?”

Dean swallows hard and nods. Pushes out another breath.

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Okay, good,” Sam’s shoulders sink with relief as he pats the side of Dean’s face. He glances up at Jack, hovering by the table, before he meets Dean’s eyes again. “Dean, what happened?”

Scrubbing a hand over his face, Dean nods. _Focus_ , he thinks. _Cas needs you to focus._

“The—” his throat seizes again, and he swallows hard, forces the words out past the sour taste still lingering in his mouth. “It was the Empty.”

Sam frowns.

“The Empty was here?”

“It took him. I— I couldn’t—”

_I couldn’t even speak,_ he thinks. _I didn’t even—_

“How? It can’t visit Earth unless it’s summoned.”

“It was— Billie was—”

“Billie summoned it?”

“No, I—” Dean huffs and holds up a hand. “Just. Give me a minute, okay?”

Backing off, Sam gives Dean some room, and sits on the edge of the table beside Jack. It doesn’t help much, but it’s something. Having a few feet of space. He can’t bear to see their faces while he tells them what he has to tell them. In all honesty, he can’t bear for them to see his right now either, but at this point that ship has sailed.

Dean picks a point on the wall behind them to look at, and tells them everything. Tells them about going to Billie’s library; about her single-minded desperation to kill Dean for what he’d done to her. How she’d claimed that Chuck was to blame for the people disappearing. How she’d stalked them through the bunker and crushed Dean’s heart with a thought. He doesn’t mention that it still feels like her vise grip is squeezing tight around it.

“I don’t know what I was thinking, going to the dungeon. But once we were there, we were trapped, and Billie was going to break through the door any second. She was gonna… she was gonna kill us both. I mean, we were _done_.”

They’re both just looking at him, waiting, and Dean knows he has to keep going. Has to tell them what happened. But it’s personal, and it’s fresh, and Dean— he’s rudderless at sea.

Because Cas loved him, and died for him, and he did it without ever knowing that Dean was right there with him.

“But then Cas thought of something.”

“The Empty wanted revenge on Billie,” Sam guesses, and Dean nods. 

“Turns out, uh… Cas made a deal. Back when we lost Jack. When we broke him out of Heaven.”

“He told you,” Jack breathes, and Dean’s heart stutters a moment before he realizes that he’s only talking about the deal. Of course he knew—he must have been there when Cas made it.

“Today,” Dean nods, and his voice is razor sharp. “He told me today.”

Jack’s chin quivers as he tries to hold back tears, but though he looks devastated, the overriding emotion on his face is fear. It only takes a few seconds for Dean to figure out why.

He’s afraid that Dean is going to turn on him again. That Dean will blame him for what happened to Cas. Blame him for this like he’s been blaming him for everything since the moment he was born. 

But Dean looks at him—forces himself to really look at him—and understands why Cas did it. Why he took on that burden. Jack was Cas’ son. He was _their_ son.

If Dean hadn’t made a deal to save Sam, he never would have met Cas in the first place. And before that, John had done the same for Dean.

Looking back now, Dean realizes that he never really understood his father.

The surface level stuff—the machismo, the short temper, the need to avenge Mary’s death—that was all easy. Dean watched him and learned from him and told himself that so long as he could make John happy, make him proud, emulate him, that he’d be okay. He’d be able to keep Sam safe. Make himself useful. Save the world.

But in the years since John died, Dean’s found himself wondering why he’d ever tried. Wondered who his dad really was in the first place. Why he was the way he was. Whether that short fuse of his had always been as bad; if it was a genetic inevitability that Dean would turn out the same way. Aggressive. Bullheaded. Angry.

It’s not what he wants. Not who he wants to be.

Whenever he feels himself slipping into the role that John trained him for—barking orders at Sam, talking down to Jack, snapping at Ben back when he’d spent those months with Lisa—he hates himself for it.

Because even though he made that sacrifice to save Dean, John had never shown that he cared. His death still hangs over Dean’s head, even now, because it felt like John had withheld his love right up until he’d used it as a weapon.

He doesn’t want to be that kind of parent to Jack. He doesn’t want to be a drill sergeant.

When he thinks about what he really wants to be to this strange, wonderful overgrown three year old, his thoughts turn first to comfort. Happiness. Baking Jack’s birthday cake, taking him fishing, teaching him to drive, making him smile—those are the things he’s proudest of. Those are the things that he wants Jack to remember about him when he’s gone.

(When he thinks about what he really wants for _himself_ , it follows the same line—rain showers with perfect water pressure. Baking an apple pie from scratch with a perfect crust. Spending long nights under the stars with the people he loves. Road trips to nowhere. Toes in the sand. Composing mixtapes that flow perfectly from one song to the next, to tell a truth that he can’t manage to put into words. 

Cas’ hand in his own, just holding on. Just because he wants to; just because he can.

Because he hates what he does and what it does to him. Wishes he could _create_ instead of _destroy_ , but it’s never been on the cards. His hands are scarred and clumsy, and whenever he’s tried he’s only made things worse.)

But Cas only saw the love in him. Cas looked at him, all of him, the ugly parts and the violent parts and the parts that made Dean want to hide, and saw nothing but the love that fuels him from within.

The need to prove Cas right is suddenly all he can think about. To make _him_ proud, in whatever way he can. To make up for everything that fell apart.

Cas said that knowing Dean changed him. Well, knowing Cas changed Dean, too. He thinks for the better. He wants it to be for the better.

How he looks after Jack from this point on is at the core of that, but the terrified expression on his face right now says that Dean has already failed. He needs to do better. Needs to do Cas proud.

“He asked me not to say anything,” Jack hurries to add, snapping Dean out of his spiraling thoughts. “He thought it would only make you worry, and that there wasn’t any risk because the Empty said it would only take him when he let himself be happy, and he… he didn’t think that would happen.”

For a long moment, Jack’s words just hang in the air. 

In the silence, Dean hears Cas again. Hears the hitch in his voice. Remembers the way he’d smiled. _The one thing I want, it’s something I know I can’t have._

He’s been pushing this part of it down, trying to avoid thinking about the fact that Cas was so certain Dean could never love him that he relied on it as the only thing to keep him safe from oblivion. But now the knowledge is unavoidable. Cas never knew. He really never knew. 

Did he believe that Dean cared about him at all? Did Dean ever make it clear enough to Cas that his presence was imperative to Dean’s happiness? Probably not, he realizes, or he couldn’t have done this. He wouldn’t have been happy in those last moments if he’d known that Dean would be so hurt by his loss.

Dean wants to be sick again. He has nothing left.

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Sam is saying, brow raised as he looks from Jack back to Dean, and Dean wishes that he could just leave. Just lock himself in a room and let the dark consume him. “You were in trouble, what would he possibly—”

“He’s right.”

Sam stops and looks at him in confusion.

“What? How?”

_He loved me_ , Dean thinks. _He saw the parts of me that I’ve always been afraid don’t exist, and he told me he loved me, and just telling me made him so happy that it came for him. Loving me was a death sentence._

But he can’t say any of it aloud. He just can’t. Not yet. Not while the wound is still so raw. 

Instead he just presses his lips together and looks back at that same point on the opposite wall. Stares at it like it might hold some answer that will hurt less than reality and wills himself to just stop. Breathe. Focus on something he can control.

“Dean?” Sam prompts, and Dean shakes his head.

“Please, just. Leave it alone. For now, I’ll—”

“We need to—”

“I _can’t_ , Sam. Not right now. If I… if I go there, I’m gonna lose it.”

He doesn’t mean to say it the same way that Sam did, to potentially expose his splintered heart, but once the words are out it’s too late to pull them back.

He can tell that Sam noticed. Can tell that he doesn’t want to let it go. He’s always been like a dog with a bone when he knows Dean is withholding something important. But something in Dean’s face, in the inadvertent echo of Sam’s own words, must make him realize that it’s not the time.

“Okay,” Sam says finally, carefully. “It’s okay.”

It’s a lie that neither of them believes, but right now they’ve got a world to save. It doesn’t matter if they’re okay. They just need to keep fighting. They need to be ready. Focused. They can’t drop the ball now.

Pushing himself to his feet, Dean tries to forcibly shift his attention from the empty space where Cas should be, and looks at his brother instead. Looks at Jack. Meets them both head on.

Cas would want him to get through this. Cas would believe he could.

“Look, I need to— what’s our next step, here? Are we heading back to meet Donna and Bobby and—”

Sam and Jack glance at one another, and something in their expressions pulls Dean right back off the track that he’s barely managed to climb onto. What tiny speck of hope he still had that they might be able to get through this gutters and dies like a flame in a snowstorm.

“What happened?” he asks.

“It was… it was Chuck, I guess.”

“We couldn’t stop it,” Jack tells him. “Everyone just kept disappearing.”

“Then what are we doing here? We need to move, we’ve gotta save—”

“There’s no one _left_ to save,” Sam cuts in, the facade of calm he’s been attempting to maintain finally breaking. “Everybody’s gone.”

Terror rising in his chest, Dean heads for the stairs, ignoring Sam and Jack’s insistence that it’s no use. _Everybody’s gone._ When he yanks the bunker door open, the sound of blaring horns echoes up through the field across the road, and he hears the heavy percussive crackle- _thud_ of something exploding several miles away. A car, maybe.

Massive plumes of black smoke rise on the horizon. Dean can smell something acrid and toxic burning in the air, but he can’t quite place it.

Behind him, Sam and Jack come to a stop on the landing.

“The roads are a mess,” Sam says, voice shaky. “That’s why it took us so long to get back. We thought— when you didn’t answer your phone, we thought that you might’ve been gone, too.”

“No,” Dean says distantly, not quite registering what Sam is telling him. “I was here.”

“We saw a plane crash,” Jack adds, gesturing along the road, and when Dean looks where he’s pointing he sees another cloud of black smoke, much closer. Somewhere near the part of Lebanon where they go to get pizza. “Well. A few planes. We don’t think there was anyone inside.”

The way he says it is carefully detached in a way that makes Dean’s stomach sink lower than it’s already sitting. Jack has given up. Dean thinks that maybe he has, too.

“What are we supposed to do?”

An incongruously gentle breeze ripples through the tall grass on the roadside, and the late afternoon sun beams down warmth onto Dean’s face, and nobody answers. 

Everything feels hopeless. Pointless. Dean doesn’t know how to save the world when there’s nobody left in it. Doesn’t know if there’s even any reason left to try. He’s not sure what possesses him to start walking toward the town, but he’s halfway down the road before he knows it. 

Silently, Sam and Jack follow. 

It only takes a few minutes for them to emerge onto the main road, and when they do, when Dean sees the mess of empty cars with their engines still running, the delivery van with its hood buried in the side of the white house on the corner, the bicycle overturned on the gravel on the shoulder, the enormity of everything hits him anew.

It makes sense, he thinks as Sam nudges his elbow and steers him back toward the bunker. 

The whole world died when Cas did.

_________

Back inside the bunker, the thick walls and heavy door block out the sound of everything ending, and they descend the stairs in silence. None of them have spoken a word since they started heading back.

By the map table, Sam pauses, resting his fingertips atop an empty section of the Pacific. Jack keeps walking, heading down the hallway towards his room, and Sam’s eyes follow him for a moment before he pulls out a chair and sits.

As Dean watches, he pulls his phone from his pocket and hunches forward, tapping on the screen to open a string of text messages. Eileen’s messages.

_Don’t torture yourself,_ Dean wants to tell him, but he knows he’s going to be playing back his own saved voicemails the moment he gets a chance. Besides, the silence feels impenetrable. Like it’s the only thing keeping them both from bursting.

So he keeps his mouth shut, and stops behind Sam’s chair, and leans down to grip him in a tight hug. Presses his forehead to his neck and just breathes as Sam’s freehand rises to hold him there.

For a moment, they stay like that. Quiet and petrified, eking out what small comfort they can from one another until they both exhale, and Dean stands.

Looking up, watery-eyed, Sam smiles. It’s a small thing, full of gratitude, and Dean sends one back before tilting his head toward the hallway. He doesn’t need to give voice to the idea that they’ll reconvene later; Sam understands with a glance, and he nods in agreement. Dean squeezes his shoulder before he leaves him to his messages and his photos and his grief.

_________

Halfway between Jack’s room and his own is the room Dean set up for Cas when he finally came to stay. 

It’s much the same as all the others in the bunker. 

Two gray concrete walls, two red brick. A desk, a bed, a narrow bookshelf. A table with two chairs, where Dean had spent several late nights trying to convince Cas that his insomnia was, in fact, a feature and not a bug.

The room didn’t get a lot of use, in the end.

Any time that they weren’t out on a hunt, Cas spent the vast majority of his time working at the table in the library or frowning at coffee molecules in the kitchen. Sometimes, he’d putter around in one of the storage rooms downstairs, poking at ancient scrolls and curse boxes and memorizing the locations of things that he thought might turn out to be useful. Sometimes, he’d knock on Dean’s door and wait to be invited to sit beside him on the bed and watch something on Dean’s laptop.

Cas rarely used his own bed, except when he’d been injured, and on a couple of occasions when he’d claimed to have spent the evening meditating. Dean still thinks he was just embarrassed to admit that he enjoyed sleeping; he’d needled Cas about it until Sam told them to shut up or find somewhere else to go annoy each other.

But he did use the desk, and he did keep things on the shelf, and his presence could always be felt in the room just by standing inside when he was gone. Dean knows that for a fact. He’d done it a dozen times after Cas told him he was moving on.

So it doesn’t take Dean long to track Jack down.

The door is halfway closed, but the light is on, and Dean makes his way inside.

There are a few things scattered around. A coffee mug on the desk—the one with the chipped lip that Cas has always favored for some unknowable reason. The keys to Cas’ truck. A heavy, wildly inaccurate book of angel lore that he’d taken to editing in the margins whenever they found themselves with a rare day of downtime. A stack of other lore books, ones he’d been using to try and find a solution to the mess that was currently falling down around them. A couple of the pens he liked to use—not ballpoints, but some with soft tips and gel ink that he insisted were less damaging to the paper. His spare angel blade. A small, sand-colored rock.

Jack is standing by the desk, skimming his hands over the things Cas left behind. 

He looks up when Dean walks in, and snatches his hand away from the desk as though he thinks Dean will tell him he shouldn’t be touching anything. His eyes are puffy. His cheeks are wet. The sight makes Dean’s chest ache, but he doesn’t let himself look away.

“Are you okay?”

Jack seems surprised that Dean has asked, and it’s just proof that Dean needs to work harder. To try. To spend whatever time they still have being the kind of person that Cas would want to take care of their kid.

“No,” Jack says after a moment, and Dean nods.

“Me neither.”

Closing the door behind him, Dean crosses the room to stand by Jack and look at the desk. Up close, he sees that what he’d thought was just a rock is actually a fossil; the kind they sell at gift shops outside museums.

Dean picks it up. Turns it over in his hand and runs a thumb over the tiny ribs of the ancient fish. Wonders where Cas found it. If he’d touched it this same way. If there was a story behind it, something Cas had wanted to share but never had the chance.

Knowing he’ll never be able to ask him makes the worst parts of Dean want to hurl the rock against the wall, but he pushes through. Curls his fingers around it and exhales before placing it carefully back on the desk.

Beside him, Jack flips open the book of angel lore to a random page. Near the bottom, Cas has crossed out a flowery line describing Ariyael as an angel tasked with bringing peace, and written _While this is technically accurate, Ariyael provided peace to those he met through a somewhat brutal series of what he considered mercy killings._

Dean reads it and smiles. It hurts, but it’s a good hurt. Knowing that there are pages on pages on pages of notes that he hasn’t seen. Little pieces of Cas that he can make his way through slowly. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get tired of knowing more of his thoughts, his opinions. His feelings.

Dean’s smile fades. He didn’t really have a plan when he came in here. He feels hollowed out. Like someone scraped his insides away and left him with nothing.

Glancing over at Jack, he sees the furrow in his brow and blurts out the first thing that comes to mind.

“You look like him.”

Jack closes the book and faces Dean, and the way he tilts his head in question only elevates the likeness.

“I know it doesn’t make sense,” Dean goes on. “He’s— I mean, he wasn’t actually— But, you really look like him.”

“That’s because I chose him,” Jack replies, his tone matter-of-fact and at wholly odds with the troubled look on his face. It throws Dean for a loop. He blinks.

“What do you—”

“Before I was born. He reached out to me, and I sensed him, and I felt my mother telling me that I should trust him.” Jack shrugs and sniffs and wipes at his nose with his sleeve. “I wanted to be like him, so… I made myself like him.”

“And here I figured it was a coincidence.”

“No. I chose him to be my father. And I chose—”

Jack stops abruptly, like he’s unsure if he should say whatever else is on his mind, and Dean nudges him gently with his elbow. Gestures toward the table in the corner.

“Wanna sit?”

Nodding, Jack makes his way over and takes the seat furthest from the door. Back to the wall. Dean’s usual seat. 

Dean takes the one that Cas always preferred, and tries to keep himself from asking Jack to complete his thought, to tell him what else it was that he chose. But he _thinks_ about it. Thinks in endless circles. 

Because it hasn’t escaped his notice that while Jack looks like Cas, and carries himself like Cas, he acts like Dean a lot of the time, too.

Dean can’t remember a lot about those first days after Jack was born—his head had been spinning, sick with grief—but he does have flashes. Moments. Jack mirroring his every action in that motel before he learned to be more subtle about it. 

Even still, he’s artless about it sometimes. _It’s like I’m you,_ he’d grinned that afternoon when Dean had taught him how to drive. Dean still remembers the rush of warmth he’d felt, knowing that Jack was happy to be spending time with him.

So he wonders now--did Jack choose him, as well? And if he did, did he make that choice because of what he learned first-hand, or did he just take on Cas’ viewpoint when he’d decided to make himself in his image? Did he consider Dean his father because Cas saw him as good, and worthy, and selfless, and full of love?

(Or, a smaller, part of him wonders--did Cas secretly want this for the two of them, a family of their own? Did he inadvertently pass that longing to Jack, somehow?)

But he can’t ask. Can’t make this about himself. He lost Cas and he’s going to be mourning him for the rest of his life, but Jack did too. Dean refuses to be like his own father here. Won’t try to bear this pain like it's his alone.

Won’t monopolize this loss and force his son to downplay his own grief just to keep them afloat.

With his hands spread across the table between them, Dean catches Jack’s downcast gaze and tries to do better.

“He was—” the past tense hurts to use, sticks in his throat. “I want you to know, Jack. He loved you so much. He was _so_ proud of you. We all are. But Cas knew it from the start.”

Jack doesn’t reply, and Dean keeps going. 

“I know things have been rough. I know I’ve… I haven’t been fair to you. Everything kept blowing up, but it wasn’t fair of me to blame you. Even… Jack, even what happened with— with mom. I _know_ it was an accident, and I know you cared about her, and that she— she was family to you, too. And I know that you’ll never forgive yourself for what happened to her. But I want you to know that I do. I forgive you, Jack.”

With every word that passes his lips, he feels as though he’s excising another tumor. Cutting out the malignant rage that’s been festering in him for longer than he can remember and freeing himself from its control.

Maybe they only have minutes left before Chuck wipes them all off the board, but Dean can’t think about that. If they only have minutes, then he wants to spend them being the person Cas thought he was. And if they have more? Well, Dean’s tired of digging his own grave. He’s ready to put the work in. To be better. To change for good. 

It might be too late for him and Cas, but he’ll be damned if he lets his sacrifice be for nothing. He’s going to love the people he has left as fully as he can.

“I love you, Jack. And I’m sorry that I never said it. I’m sorry for how I’ve treated you. I want to do better. To be the… to be the kind of dad that you deserve.”

Jack is out of his chair and hugging him before he knows what’s happening, and he holds on tight. It’s a long time before he lets go, and when he does, Dean’s face is as tear-streaked as Jack’s is. He doesn’t try to hide it. Doesn’t want Jack to feel like either of them need to do anything but be honest about how much this hurts, how big of a hole there is in a world without Cas.

“We should go check on Sam, yeah?” Dean asks him with a shaky smile, and Jack nods as he moves away, offering a hand to help Dean to his feet.

“Okay.”

When he reaches the door, Jack pauses to look back at him.

“Dean?”

“Yeah, kid?”

There’s still some trepidation in Jack’s eyes, but it’s lessened. Softer. Like maybe some of what Dean said might stick. He hopes it will. Hopes that if it doesn’t, he’ll be able to work at it until it does. More than anything, he hopes they’ll have time for it to come naturally.

“What was it?” Jack asks finally. “What made him happy?”

It would be easy for Dean to feign ignorance. To pretend that he doesn’t know the answer, to skirt the truth and push it down and let the pain of holding it alone slowly poison him. It would be easy. But taking the easy route is what got him here. It’s what stopped him from ever being honest with Cas while he still had the chance. He’s not going to keep making that mistake.

So he smiles at Jack, and it’s a brittle, fragile thing, but it’s there.

“It was love,” he says simply. “That’s what made him happiest. Letting himself feel love.”

It’s not the whole story, and he suspects that Jack can tell, but it’s a start. For the first time all day, Dean has hope that in time, he’ll be able to finish it.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [For Good](https://genius.com/Idina-menzel-and-kristin-chenoweth-for-good-lyrics) from Wicked, because I guess this is where I am emotionally these days.
> 
> Many thanks to Nat & Maria for the support while I wrote this (and for being constant sounding boards, tbh), to Bea for the feedback, and to Robert Middlename Berens for being a literal demon whose brilliant episodes have been destroying and inspiring me for years ♥


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